Introduction
Since the Victorian era there has been a sharp increase in the levels of waste that need to be disposed of and the nature of this waste has also changed dramatically.
In 2008 alone it was estimated that Scotland produced 20 million tonnes of controlled waste, with 2.9 million tonnes coming from household waste, 8.6 million from the construction sector and 7.9 million tonnes from the rest of the industrial and commercial sectors .
With the amount of waste produced year on year increasing it is important that the environmental and health impacts from the waste are effectively minimised. In response to these concerns the Scottish Government has introduced a new waste strategy in form of the Zero Waste Plan 2010¹ which highlights the need for all waste to be seen as a resource and takes on board the ideas of the EC Waste Directive 2008 to reduce, reuse, and recycle before considering waste for disposal to landfill. This plan sets targets that by 2025, 70% of waste should be recycled and that at most 5% of waste will be sent to landfill.
In order to achieve these ambitious targets there must be laws in place that will allow for the effective management of waste in Scotland. This essay will therefore examine the main waste laws and regulations in Scotland.
Waste law in Scotland
The law surrounding waste in Scotland is heavily fragmented and several different statutes make the provisions for waste in Scotland such as the Environmental Protection Act 1990 .
Environmental Protection Act 1990 (EPA)
The EPA 1990, which implements the EC Waste Framework Directive, is currently the most important statue that regulates waste in Scotland as it prohibits the unlawful deposit of controlled waste, unless it is at a landfill site...
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...f the public to apply for an abatement notice in cases where there is litter in a public place; this will be served to the responsible body that will have to fulfil the obligations required under section 89 .
Furthermore, local authorities can issue street litter control notices to specific premises to ensure that that the street and public areas that are in the proximity of the premises are kept clear and they are also able to designate land to prevent distribution of free printed material. Lastly the local authorities are entitled to seize any abandoned shopping or luggage trollies and either return them to their owners and impose a fine, or dispose of them .
In addition to the EPA there now the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse (Scotland) 2006 regulations which provides guidance on how the local authorities will best fulfil their duties under the EPA.
A person’s trash becomes public property when it is left at the curb of a house for collection by the city employees. Since garbage bags left at the curb of a public street are readily accessible to many different people such as children, scavengers, snoops, and animals, a warrant to search an area which the public has easy access to is not required.
The piece of legislation that is responsible for enforcing and regulating the production of hazardous waste, its type of management and disposal methods is known as The Hazardous Waste (England and Wales)Regulations 2005. According to The Hazardous Waste (England and Wales)Regulations 2005 part 1 of the legislation it states in article 4 of the waste directive is that the waste must be disposed of in a way that doesn’t harm human health or resorting to ways which would degrade the environment such as the surrounding surface such as soil, the natural flora in the area and the local fauna of the surrounding environment.
A very important issue tied to Canada’s future sustainability is that of recycling. There is currently a shortage of suitable landfill spaces in Canada, and the current landfills produce harmful emissions (Statistics Canada, 2008). Using methods to divert as many of these wastes away from landfills will help to slow their growth and improve Canada’s future outlook. Recycling is one such method.
In Indianapolis, I see people toss trash out of their car, throw trash onto the ground, and have seen somebody aim for a garbage can, noticed that they missed it, and just left it on the ground. One person throwing garbage on the ground might not think much of it, however, when that piece trash collects other trash, they start to build up and soon form big loads of junk. For example, I am sure people never supposed that if they littered, that their trash would eventually end up in some kind of body of water. Typically, no one thinks about it until they actually go to a sea or lake and see how disgusting it looks because of the people who were too lazy to throw their garbage away. To worsen matters, littering has become very mutual, which must be stopped because in most instances, trash is not disposed of appropriately, which eventually leads to innocent individuals having to spend money on cleaning up. Some people know about the littering in Indianapolis, but most do not care, and that is only because they are not aware of the consequences it can bring or the way it appears to others. For the ones who do recognize it needs to spread the news around so there can be a solution.
Waste management is the operation of how waste materials are handled. The affair of waste management is relevant to everyone world-wide. Wastes are materials that have no further economic use, and when disposed of, are hazardous to humans and the environment. Wastes include solid waste, liquid wastes, and air pollutants created by humans and cannot be naturally recycled. Current waste management techniques need to be completely overhauled because funding in government budget is not enough to meet standards, landfills are reaching their maximum capacity worldwide, and nuclear waste storage must be handled correctly. Waste management has been a highly thought about complication for global authorities. Due to
In the case of Avco Environmental, Chantele, the clerk, faced a problem in which her company has been disposing medical waste in a local municipal landfill. She tried to reach her superiors, but they told Chantele that it is none of her business. Having no one to talk about her concern in the company, she consulted with an old friend who is in charge of the environmental column of the local newspaper. Apparently some environmental groups have expressed concerns and have started to monitor some places in the country.
Reduce, recycle and recycle could be a construct that individuals area unit beginning to perceive and to use to each life round the world (GOV.UK, 2013). This knowledge base essay can explore info concerning use by totally different resources that are provided to use such as the web, books, journals and alternative resources that needs to offer American state info on use. This essay can discover use as business, environmental and policy perspective. Use is that the methodology by that we tend to recover valuable resources to be re-used once more and once more. However just one a part of healing the atmosphere, it's a sensible action that people altogether businesses participate in daily routines on recycling (Reclaim, 2013). While recycling is only one part to healing the environment it is a practical action that individuals in all businesses and people take part in every day.
In 1982, Aberdeen announced a regulation called APG 200-2. The procedure was simple. Managers were to report any waste materials that were believed to be toxic, carcinogenic, caustic, ignitable, or reactive and were required to fill out a form known as a hard card. Once a hard card was received, designated Aberdeen organizations were responsible for transporting hazardous wastes to the permitted storage areas. The APG 200-2 regulation was both specific and extremely thorough. A standard operating procedure was issued in 1982 and reissued in 1984 as CRDCR 710-1.
Across the world a problem has been growing for decades. The problem is garbage, especially municipal solid waste. Solid wastes are all the wastes arising from human activities that are normally solid and are discarded as useless or unwanted (Elfren Bringas Paz, 2006). Generally speaking, developing countries, which have higher productivity and high quality of living, produce more municipal solid waste per capita than low-income countries. This is also the reason why the USA and Canada are world leaders in waste production. For example, even with a plan to reduce waste production by 50%, Toronto, Canada, is running out of places to dispose its municipal solid waste. In 2007, every day each American produced 4.6 pounds of garbage on average. The amount of the municipal waste has more than doubled since 1960, and the per capita rate has increased by nearly 70% at the same time (Enger and Smith, 2002). Under this condition, the solid waste management has been one of the major concerns in urban management. This essay will compare and contrast the ways to deal with municipal solid waste in Canada and the USA. Firstly, it will compare the recycling programs supported by governments of these two countries. Following this, it will look at another two ways of waste disposal (landfill and incineration) and compare their applications in Canada and the USA. Finally, it will contrast the methods of garbage sorting in the two countries.
America and Europe are at the top of the list for most waste generated according to Waste (4). This is very visible because there’s litter on every street in the towns and cities, as well in lakes, beaches, and rivers. The book Waste by Rob Bowden states that the amount of waste produced is increasing at a rate faster than population growth. About 1.5 million computers, in the U.K, are thrown away each year and most end up in landfills. There are 3 types of waste which are Municipal Solid Waste, Industrial Waste, and Hazardous waste. MSW includes waste from public garbage cans and local dumpsters. Industrial Waste includes massive amounts of waste water that is contaminated with chemicals. Hazardous waste is the most dangerous as it presents a danger to human health and the environment. Solutions for waste disposal take time because people need to consider their lifestyle and limit the amount of waste they generate. A good start is to recycle items such as paper, cans, plastic, and clothes. This way they don’t end up in landfills, beaches, or streets. Another solution is to join organizations that go around places to recycle, or organizations that demand the reduction in the amount of products that are being
Policy is needed to regulate which course of action should be taken and how it should be implemented. Because of this, many plans and policies revolving around the management of solid waste have been put in place. Sometimes however, a particular policy can have its shortfalls, potentially resulting in its negative aspects outweighing the positive ones. According to the Conference Board of Canada Report, “Canadians dispose of more municipal solid waste per capita than any other country” (2013). Solid waste management in particular, involves many aspects, ranging from packaging waste, food waste, etc. (White & Franke 1999), hence, the following analysis revolves around household and commercial waste – referred to as Municipal Solid Waste (White & Franke. 1999) – in the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Municipal waste is a major health and environmental concern as it contributes to numerous problems like habitat destruction, surface groundwater pollution, and other forms of air, soil, and water contamination. Waste disposal methods like incineration create toxic substances, and landfills emit methane, which contributes to global warming. According to the Zero Waste Objective Report, “The impact of climate change and the increasing awareness of the role of “waste” and “wasting” in the production of greenhouse gas emissions is a constant environmental pressure… (2009). This leads to an increasing limitation of government to prevent and control the volume and toxicity of products in the waste stream and a growing need to shift responsibility to the product manufacturer.
As humanity develops new technology, the magnitude and severity of waste increases. When computers were developed, it widely was believed that the need for paper would be eliminated. On the contrary this was widely proven false and we are now utilizing more paper than ever. Canada is not an exception as the typical Canadian generates an average of three pounds of solid waste each day1. This alone shows what a careless species we have become- using and disposing materials without even considering the damage we are causing. With half a trillion tones of waste around the world, only 25% may be reused for a second or third time and less than 5% can be renewed limitlessly1. These facts are true only in developed countries. Since these traditional waste reduction methods have been proven inefficient, we must endorse new innovative technology to arrive at a solution.
Efficient waste managing approaches help with reducing and avoiding unpleasant impact on the environment and human health, while allowing financial development and progress in the quality of people’s life. People do not even imagine what is the size and capacity of their activities and the impact they produce on the environment. Garbage is an important ecological problem. It is seems amazing that approximately all of the citizens of the world identify rubbish as a major environmental problem and yet these people still litter. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (2008), an American produces 250 million tons of garbage per year (para.2). There are different circumstances that are based on the society, environmental conditions, occupation and size of each of the different family. As Richmond (2010) stated, if no administration organizations has the responsibility or resources to concentrate their efforts on the waste disposal, then the responsibility to do that is on ...
Wastes are the products of our consumptions in our daily life routines such as lunch, work, school and other things we do. Little things such as throwing out a piece of paper, we are producing waste by the seconds. After we consume a product we usually throw out what’s left that can’t be consumed any further. Results in producing waste, substance that are born after it’s been use or consume by us. At the end of each day we throw out a bag full of garbage, all of the materials in that bag (paper towels, cans, leftover foods and many other material’s) all of these are waste. Hospitals produce medical waste such as use needles for treating patients. Corporations produce papers, plastics, tires, steels, cans and many other type of solid waste which contribute to the pollutions that cause health risk and other environmental issues.
"Recycling | Reduce, Reuse, Recycle | US EPA." US Environmental Protection Agency. Web. 06 Dec. 2011. .